Go 64!

A full week since the moon boot application. As my niece would say, vacant of all enthusiasm and flat as pancake, “yay”. 

In truth it’s better than not having one, as it feels more secure and is more tolerant of bumps and people sitting it on it. Thanks G1. “But it was dark!!!!”

I try to hobble to the nerd room, and my computer every few days, but if I can’t, I still have my trusty phone to help ease the boredom of enforced rest. 

Yes siree, we’ve come a long way from the technology of my youth.

I can’t recall the exact story of how we ended up with our trusty Commodore 64, someone was selling one, or maybe Dad scavenged it from the dump (he didn’t, I’m joking. Half.). But it took pride of place in our lounge room for my whole childhood.

Our cousins had one too, so every now and then we’d get new discs to try!

I loved unlocking the little case (locked of course to keep out nerdy robbers?) and choosing between joysticks! We had 2. One was your regular old joystick, the other had a hand grip and button! Fancy, but never worked as well as the old one. 

Time to rewind and list my all time favorite computer games, in no order whatsoever.

1. Spike ball- fantastic, OCD inducing game! You had to colour as much of the board as possible without your line getting spiked by the spike ball/s. You got more points for being brave and covering a greater distance! Tense times!

2. Boulderdash- another satisfying, OCD game! Also satisfied my love of shiny things with all the diamonds! And drove me bonkers with frustration.

3. Paperboy- I was reasonably good at this game, fairly sure we played it until it literally wore out. 

4. Bruce Lee/zorro – funny funny funny! The green jelly lady was always up for a fight and we’d spend the majority of the game fly kicking everything in sight as it was so darn funny to see!

5. Garfield- I have always loved this lasagne loving, Monday hating cat, so even though this “game” had no animation at all, I loooooved it! I would always sit Garfield on the fence with the moon behind. Pookie would be there, and odie, and sometimes I’d let Arlene and Jon in too.

6. Pieces of eight- stupid leeches. Use the salt, the saaaaalt. Why won’t you use the salt. Also makes me think of the one game we had on our schools 1 computer in year 7, Where in the world is carmon Santiago?

7. That aero plane game- yeah I can’t remember what it’s called but you were the plane and had to follow the river? Was awesome.

8. Pit Stop- not a racing fan, or a car fan, but boy o boy I loved creating the perfect shiny machine in any color I wanted! The tires were soooo shiny! Polish away!

9. Strip poker- hahahaha! Your mother wears Army boots! What?

10. The haunted castle game and Indian Jones- could have been one in the same? I’m not sure. Great games though, kind of like Ataris Pit Fall. The skunk/Russian flag thing always confused me.

11. Summer games and winter games- I’d sooner play these than watch the real deal. Winter games favorites were barrel jumping and ski jumping. Hoooooot doooooog! Oh and the overland skiing and target shooting (I’m sure it has a name). This and rowing and horse jumping in summer games, was where very precise joystick action was necessary. Only the old joy stick would do. Summer games favorites were of course, cliff diving when the threat of death by rock smash was always waiting, or getting stuck in the bottom of the sea. Hilarious. Weight lifting, watching the face turn all different colors before falling through the floor! Priceless. Log rolling was fun also, as what the tricksy old caber toss! Hours of fun!

12. Trog? Crog? I don’t remember. The caveman game. He’d ride around on a stone wheel and there was a weird hairy thing in there somewhere to.

13. Ghost busters- hit movie, and hit game! So much gun chasing slimer and trying not to cross streams!

14. Frogger- the one game that has pretty much stayed just the same over the years!

15. Print Master- now this was cool. I remember desperately wanting someone to come to us for help that had lost their dog. “But what can we do?” Boom. Print master to the rescue. Ironically it was a sausage dog on the poster, I think it covered 2 pieces of computer paper. And you could funk it up with a scolloped border. You could make anything on there! Birthday cards. Lost dog posters. Birthday signs. Calendars. Lost dog signs. Again hours of fun!

When we got our new computer when I was in my last years of high school, there were no cool games at all. A skiing game where a snowman would always, always eat me before I broke a record, and an animal, Garfield-esque “game”. However, the flying toasters and trippy fluro lined screensavers more than made up for it.

These days it’s Freefall that has me addicted, and battling my crew on words with friends. And it may sound crazy, but I would trade this iPhone  technology in for our Commodore 64 and all it’s glorious floppy disc games in a heart beat!